A well known computing system for operating a plurality of computing devices is a system using the remote desktop solution. In computing, the term “remote desktop” refers to software or an operating system feature allowing graphical applications to be run remotely on a server, while being displayed locally. Remote desktop solutions are not supported by all operating systems. All graphics information is transferred via a communication channel (e.g. LAN: Local Area Network) and therefore has reduced display performance.
The following further components for combining a plurality of computing devices are known: a “picture-in-picture” or “chroma key” display solution, keyboard-video-mouse switches (KVM-switches) and remote virtualization solutions (virtual machines).
The chroma key solution shows the screen of two or more computing devices on a single display but still requires separate input devices for each system.
Patent application US 2001/0033340 A1 depicts an apparatus for composing image data of a main picture and image data of a sub-picture by a chroma key process.
The KVM-switch solution allows an operation of multiple systems from one set of input devices, but the user must switch manually between the systems. Even if the screen of all devices would be combined on one display using a Picture-in-Picture or Chroma Key solution, the user still has to know which part of the display is contributed by which computing device to select the appropriate one for switching the input devices to that computing device.